The problem came about when we decided not to run the notes at
the 11th hour (we couldn't agree on a footnote policy for
Wikipedia entries, which are ever-changing, and I resisted
timestamps) and so we decided to write-through them instead.
Obviously I did a better job of that in some places than in
others, and I feel terrible about the bits where I missed
passages.

All these will be fixed before publication in the ebook, and the
we'll publish the originally-planned notes online, where the
Wikipedia problem is solved with a simple link, by the time the
book is published.

The problem with this response, however, is that a citation is
supposed to say, "I got this idea or fact from this source," not
" I am quoting this source." That's what quotation marks are for.
Presumably, Chris didn't want so much of his book to be in
quotes, or else it wouldn't look like he did much original
writing.

We've reached out to Chris (again) on this point and will update
when and if he responds.

Update: As promised, here is Chris's reponse:

Yes, we were going to blockquote the Wikipedia exceprts, but
couldn't agree on a citation form. So we left the internal
quotes, where Wikipedia citied a NYT article, for instance,
because those were correctly attributed, and then I endeavored to
write through the rest in my own words. I clearly did a crappy
job of that second part in a few instances, and I'm very sorry
about that.

In the corrected ebooks you'll see that we just cite Wikipeda as
we should have all along, and the notes give URLs, etc.

This is my fault, but it does raise a question about what the
right form for citing Wikipedia in a book is. I think what we
eventually settled on--a reference in the text, and a URL in
online notes, seems okay for now, but it doesn't solve the
changing source material problem. It will be interesting to see
how the mainstream book industry (as opposed to the academic
press) figures this out.